I'm starting to think about getting back into animation properly. Now that Jenna is a bit more independent, I'm able to have two eyes on the task ahead of me and not always having to check if there is a wee on the floor or not!
Speaking of Jenna, she's just jumped up on me and thus the laptop on my lap to say hello. I don't know how she does it, but she always manages to create some sort of interesting problem on my computer just by stepping on the keypad. On this occasion, she's managed to delete the picture I had just uploaded!!
Anyway. Using the previous experiences I've had with stop motion animation, I've found that I need some sort of structure inside the plasticine model to make it easier to move on set. The Magicked Picnic was a good example. Because I was moving the little guy so much, his arms were falling off incredibly easily as the plasticine kept cracking on the joint of movement. At the end of shooting, his arm looked totally deformed and a lot shorter!
So I decided the way to go was to just build my future models around this skeleton structure in order to combat those annoying little problems. It should hopefully make them a lot more flexible including actually being able to walk in a human like fashion.
As you can see, I made the armature by twisting two wires together and moulding them into the desired shape. It was a bit fiddly though; I think because it was my first time.
I was inspired to do this because I've been reading up on the way Aardman do things. Of course, their armatures are way more advanced using Meccano like skeletons. But, I'm sure every animator there started out making armatures just like mine to animate with. Everyone starts at the bottom and works up. I unfortunately am barely off the bottom! Time though. Time and determination I guess will change this!
